Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights
John C. Rolfe, Ed.

---

[p. 381]

Shaping the silver, Hephaestus,
Make me no panoply, pray;
What do I care for war's combats?
Make me a drinking cup rather,
Deep as you ever can make it;
Carve on it no stars and no wains;
What care I, pray, for the Pleiads,
What for the star of Bootes?
Make vines, and clusters upon them,
Treading them Love and Bathyllus,
Made of pure gold, with Lyaeus.

Then several Greeks who were present at that dinner, men of refinement and not without considerable acquaintance also with our literature, began to attack and assail Julianus the rhetorician as altogether barbarous and rustic, since he was sprung from the land of Spain, was a mere ranter of violent and noisy speech, and taught exercises in a tongue which had no charm and no sweetness of Venus and the Muse; and they asked him more than once what he thought of Anacreon and the other poets of that kind, and whether any of our bards had written such smooth-flowing and delightful poems; “except,” said they, “perhaps a few of Catullus and also possibly a few of Calvus; for the compositions of Laevius were involved, those of Hortensius without elegance, of Cinna harsh, of Memmius rude, and in short those of all the poets without polish or melody.”

Then Julianus, filled with anger and indignation, spoke as follows in behalf of his mother tongue, as if for his altars and his fires: “I must indeed grant you ”